The Problem with Josephine

The Problem with Josephine

Back of the Book

Napoleon and Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, 1810

It's springtime in Paris and Emperor Napoleon is about to marry Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria. All around the city Napoleon's courtiers are preparing for the spectacularly lavish wedding. Everything must be just right...

Ordered to remove all portraits of Josephine, the Emperor's first wife, seamstress Sophie has to track down a talented artist called Jacques. He promises to carry out the commission, but only in return for a kiss for every hour he works...

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Lucy Ashford's Bio

As a child, Lucy was at her happiest immersed in a book, and fortunately the public library was just around the corner, so she was one of its most regular clients! She studied English at Nottingham University and was supposed to immerse herself in Anglo-Saxon, linguistics, the lotbut really, looking back, she was always drawn to novelsespecially historical novels.

After her degree, Lucy became the mainstay of the public library yet again by actually working in oneand oh, all those lovely books! Surely, surely she could try to write one? And so began her life as a "wannabe" author, coping with family and job at the same time; receiving the usual rejections, but quite a lot of encouragement as well, until the marvellous day of being taken on by a London agent and getting that first contract. A champagne moment, definitely!

Lucy has written longer historical novels (thrillers) under her real name, Elizabeth Redfern, but has also fulfilled a dream by writing romances for Mills & Boon. Years ago, she was runner-up in a Mills & Boon historicals competition. That book never made it to publicationthe Regency heroine was pathetic and kept fainting, she remembersbut Lucy learned a lot, and years later, with patient and skilled help from editor Linda Fildew, she got her first Mills & Boon contract for The Major and the Pickpocketmore champagne! She has always had a fertile imagination, which she puts down to her Celtic rootsher family on both sides come from the Isle of Man, and she gets back there whenever she can.

Lucy has lived in London and various other parts of the United Kingdom with her long-suffering husband, a retired solicitor. She has one daughter, a musician based in York. Lucy and her husband now live in the Peak District, near to Bakewell and beautiful Chatsworth House, in an old stone cottage with roses around the front door. She loves gardening and walking in the hills, dreaming up her next story.